My son has not had issues using the CTA but was mugged at gunpoint while walking in HP last spring. Interestingly, the university did not issue an alert about this incident. Maybe because it happened off campus?
@GraniteStateMom where in HP did the incident occur?
@JBStillFlying near CVS. Campus police were a block or so away, so they were the first notified. UCPD called in Chicago PD.
@GraniteStateMom CVS is on 53rd, correct? (things have changed a bit since my day . . . ). So yeah, maybe it was too far away from campus (4-5 blocks). Surely it was in the police incident report. That’s scary - I hope your son is OK.
Anyone know how many other students were held up last school year in HP?
I wonder if reports of violent crime to the city police are automatically included in U of C reports (at least if the student was on university property when it happened)? After my attack, I called 911 and the Chicago city police came fairly quickly (and criticized me for not forcing the university to put better locks on my doors or breaking my lease and moving to a safer apartment, not that this had anything to do with my attack, which didn’t occur in my apartment). I was in the process of final packing up, and moved away 2 days later and didn’t notify the university of the attack myself. I don’t think I would have known how to do that, though I suppose I could have gone through phone lists and maybe found someone at the university to tell. That, at least, seems to be better nowadays.
With the internet, it certainly should be easier to report crimes and for a college to notify others of them nowadays. IF a college wants to really wants to keep track. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/clery-act-reports
Given that the CVS is literally next door to the place where the University is proposing to house upperclasspeople – not to mention that there are tons of undergraduates living in the area – I would be very surprised if the University doesn’t “count” crimes against undergraduates there.
@marlowe1 I don’t think going to the University of Chicago is equivalent to riding a motorcycle.
@JBStillFlying , you may not be so far off about graduate students, based on my vicarious experience. They tend to live in sketchier places, and maybe to be more confident in themselves. Both at UChicago, and around Penn when I lived there, undergraduates suffered a fair amount of petty property crime – backpacks or bikes being stolen – but when something really serious happened – which was rare – the victim tended to be a graduate student. The only Chicago student to die as a crime victim in the past decade was a graduate student living off campus in Woodlawn, 8 or 9 years ago.
This type of thread seems to pop up every Fall. Here are my contributions:
1 - People new to Chicago should read the Chicago Magazine reporting on how crime rates are reported in the City. It is a real eye-opener. Here is the first of three articles:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/
2 - Probably the best source of crime data in Chicago is provided by the city in the following link. You can zoom in to see individual crimes. Before our kids went to Hyde Park, we poured over the maps to identify areas of potential violent crime (strong arm robberies, etc.) versus non-violent crime such as vehicle or identity theft. Mid-block on some north-south streets tends to attract the most street crime. Keep that in mind when you walk around HP.
https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Crimes-Map/dfnk-7re6/data
3 - I cannot find the source now, but most crime associated with the CTA does not happen on the buses or trains themselves. By a factor of 3 or 4, the majority of transit oriented crime occurred at bus stops or train stations. You can dramatically lower the chance of something bad happening by carefully deciding which stops to wait for the bus, and where to get off.
@JHS It was starting to sound like almost everyone here or their children or friends, with one exception, had been mugged. Motorcyclists make the same point about the incidence of falls from their bikes, and they have developed an amusing fatalistic adage about that. The adage kind of fits the anecdotal evidence we are developing here about the frequency - approaching inevitability - of muggings of U of C students, doesn’t it? Analogies express such similarities of relationship within otherwise unlike sets of terms. It’s an old rhetorical trick, designed to get attention, and not always meant exactly seriously. Sometimes a whimsy is only a whimsy.
@GraniteStateMom @JBStillFlying @JHS
53rd is outside campus (map #1), but well within the UCPD’s extended patrol area (map #2)
Campus: https://d3qi0qp55mx5f5.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/safety-security/uploads/files/Campus-Boundary-Map_022316.png
Patrol area: https://d3qi0qp55mx5f5.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/safety-security/uploads/files/Extended_Patrol_Map.pdf
The UCPD regularly stations officers on 53rd, and the Polsky Innovation Exchange (among other things) is located there. Vue 53 is now a quasi-university building, and there may be others I’m forgetting.
Students regularly get security alerts about crimes that take place off-campus but fall within the Extended Patrol Map. For instance, a recent alert described two robberies on 54th and Greenwood, several blocks northeast of campus. Other crimes, like the one @GraniteStateMom 's son suffered, don’t prompt a security alert.
I have it on good authority that the Department of Safety and Security has considerable discretion to send a security alert, or decline to do so. I can’t speak to the actual criteria they use - the person that told me this declined to give specifics.- but they implied student safety isn’t the only consideration.
Reading between the lines, I suspect one factor is outside perception and another is the likely response from students. This could explain why publicly available information about some crimes (such as Title IX reports, stripped of any identifying details or specifics) isn’t communicated in security alerts, while muggings off campus are.
Case in point: between the 10th and 12th of January, the UCPD received three reports of sexual assault and one report of stalking, seemingly made by two different victims against two different perpetrators. See:
More recently, a sexual assault was reported in Cobb Hall. See:
While it’s nigh-impossible to match any of these reports to an incident or a person unless you already know the details, none of these prompted a security alert, even though one can assume students would be more than a little concerned to hear about sexual assault in their own dorms or in a lecture hall where many students have classes and (more importantly) evening study/review sessions.
The importance of maintaining anonymity for all parties in a serious and traumatic incident might explain this. On the other hand, two students passed away from natural causes this year, and the Dean of Students sent every student in the College a letter, mentioning the student by name each time. This leads me to believe that public perception plays some role, at the very least, in the decision to send out security alerts.
For a more complete picture of safety on campus, here’s the 2016-2017 Security and Fire Safety Report: Crimes are reported here whether they make it into a security alert or not.
Some interesting findings on p. 15-18:
- 107 Clery Act crimes were reported on the main campus in 2015.
- Overall crime in Hyde Park and South Kenwood fell by 15% between 2011 and 2015
- Zero students were arrested in residence halls for drug- or alcohol-related offenses from 2013 to 2015, confirming that the UCPD exists partly to keep crimes off students' criminal records. Any discipline for such conduct was internal.
I only skimmed the full report, so there’s probably a lot more to unpack than I caught while making a beeline for the data.
Having difficulty understanding how a mugging at gunpoint on 53rd - in Hyde Park - doesn’t prompt an alert. Clearly that’s an armed robbery, correct? How would public perception play a role, unless the university was concerned about perceived safety around quasi-owned residences such as Vue 53?
I’m a bit confused.
It looks like there is a notion that student-on-student (or faculty-on-student) offenses aren’t something that merits a security alert; those are saved for them-vs.-us offenses. Which is an interesting choice, since there’s a much greater likelihood that a student will be victimized by another student than by a faceless, nameless street assailant. But realistically, you can’t tell students that they should avoid their classrooms or their dorms unless there’s something like an active shooter on the loose there. Meanwhile, you can alert students to the presence of an active mugger on the streets, and that may do some good because in many cases a single active mugger or group of them will constitute a mini-crime spree over a few hours, and awareness can make a difference.
Also, the fondling cases aren’t being treated as crimes (although they probably met the definition of criminal sexual assault, if only barely). That’s an interesting tidbit for the folks who keep saying “sexual assault is a police matter.” Apparently not, even if you report it to them.
That said, I, for one, am perfectly happy that one of the missions of the UCPD is to avoid giving students criminal records for minor crimes.
@marlowe1 My point re motorcycles is that, notwithstanding the number of mugging victims associated with this thread, it is completely wrong to suggest that University of Chicago students eventually get mugged. I probably know a couple of dozen current students or recent graduates; my son is the only one of them who was ever mugged during their time at the college, and it was not even during the standard academic year.
Following up on my earlier comment #50, I can see where some crimes - victim and perp know one another, for instance - are not deemed to be a general student safety issue. That detail, of course, can be relevant to a variety of violent incidents from stalking to murder. But, unless I’m mistaken, muggings would be viewed as more random and opportunistic. That speaks to a potential safety and security concern unless the perp was immediately apprehended or died. Maybe that’s what happened.
@JHS - highly doubt it’s about “them vs. us” as it is about the types of crimes being committed in order to generate an alert. For instance, if a student snaps and starts shooting up everyone in Cobb Hall, don’t you think that the school community would be alerted pronto?
The UCPD may be born from the best of intentions, but turnover is high - many officers quit in the winter months, when a 6-8 hour shift on a street corner requires an extraordinary amount of physical and mental endurance. The average UCPD officer has less training and less experience than a junior CPD cop, and UCPD higher-ups have a lot more leverage over officers. These higher-ups aren’t dealing with the same incentives or oversight a public employee would face.
The university funds the UCPD. The university also has an image to maintain. These classifications may be deliberate. While I have a number of reservations about the CPD, if I suffered a serious crime I would trust a real cop over the UCPD without a doubt.
This isn’t wholly out of the question… Crimes near the quad are almost never the subject of a security alert, though a look through the crime logs shows they’re more frequent than you’d think.
Without knowing the criteria used in deciding to issue a security alert (which haven’t been made public) all we know is that not every crime prompts one, and some types of crimes are rarely reported. Motives are difficult to establish.
My daughter will be a freshman at UChicago in three weeks. She will live in South Campus. We have visited the campus three times, and in every opportunity we felt totally safe. However, reading this thread makes me feel very anxious about her safety. We live in a suburban area with a crime rate close to zero, even though we have traveled many times to big cities without any bad experiences.
She (and I) wonders if it will be safe to walk back and forth to and from class, or if she needs to take the shuttle to cross the Midway every time.
Until what time can she walk to the dorm by herself?
Which is the safest time and way to go to the city (Michigan Avenue, Art Institute)?
Is it safe to walk by herself in the campus during the day? It would be very tiresome to have to find someone to be with you all the time to feel safe.
Is the HP area all the same in terms of safety? Or there are certain streets to avoid? (we have not visited HP yet).
Any information will be greatly appreciated.
@“Cariño”
The Midway is safe as can be during the day. it’s a wide, largely open space with 50+ yards of visibility in every direction unless you’re in an area planted with trees or bushes. There will usually be a half-dozen students crossing the midway on S. Ellis Avenue at any given moment 10-15 minutes before the start of a class. I do most of my running here or on Lakefront Trail and have never had any issues.
South is located on the southwest corner of 61st and Ellis, with the main entrance midway between 60th and 61st. This is just opposite South/Cathey dining hall, which your daughter will share with those of us who live in B-J, and the ground floor of South includes Midway Mart, where poor unfortunate souls with an all-nighter in their future stock up on energy/caffeinated/sugary drinks and junk food until 1 am.
This means the block leading to South’s entrance is one of the busiest streets on campus, particularly late at night, and there’s always a UCPD officer at the corner of 60th and Ellis.
Streets crossing the Midway are also well-lit at night, preserving visibility on and around the pavement. It looks something like this:
If your D is travelling south through campus, walking through the quad is almost invariably safe. If she’s travelling west from someplace in Hyde Park, UCPD officers will be posted all along 59th and 60th. Given a choice, 59th is probably safer because 60th borders Woodlawn.
Walking east or north (i.e. coming from Washington Park or Woodlawn) is less safe than walking through Hyde Park - the question is how much. I also lived in a sheltered suburb before coming to Hyde Park, but haven’t had any issues despite spending more time in Woodlawn than in Hyde Park. But I’m also a guy and usually stuck to the area between 60th and 63rd, so YMMV.
For what it’s worth, I recently worked on a report that dealt at some length with crime in Woodlawn, and the real problem area is clearly West Woodlawn - West of Cottage Grove Avenue.
For a good picture of crime in the vicinity of South, the Chicago Tribune crime tracker shows crime over the last 30 days. Take a look at the report for Woodlawn (B-J and South are both technically in Woodlawn, though very much part of the University) and use the “show crime reports in neighboring communities” option to get a view of Hyde Park to the north.
http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/community/woodlawn
On weekdays, the Hyde Park Express (a.k.a. the 2 bus) stops just outside B-J, two steps from 60th and Ellis. If she need to go somewhere on the red line, the 59 bus stops at the corner of 61st and Ellis and will take her straight to the Garfield Red Line stop. The eastbound 59 can also get her to the Metra or #6 bus in a hurry.
If she’s closer to 55th than 61st, or it’s the weekend (when neither the 2 nor the 59 will be running) the 55 bus can take her to the Garfield Red Line as well as the Garfield Green Line.
On weekdays as well as weekends, the Jackson Park Express (a.k.a. the #6 bus) stops at the end of the Midway, near the MSI, and in parts of East Hyde Park/Kenwood. It’s a bit of a walk from B-J/South, but so is the Metra. I use the 6 bus a lot because it’s great - the bus skirts Grant park along Michigan Avenue (stopping right in front of the Art Institute) and its route ends at Wacker Drive (which runs along the South bank of the river).
The Red Line runs along State Street through most of the Loop and is great if your D is going anywhere North of the river - it runs all the way from 95th street to the city limits near Evanston.
The Green Line is within walking distance of B-J/South; one branch starts at 63rd and Cottage Grove Avenue. This is my go-to transit option when I’m headed to the Loop and leaving from B-J. Cottage Grove is slowly gentrifying between 60th and 63rd Streets, with a squash center, a new retail development under construction, a large affordable housing project that’s largely safe, and an apartment complex that largely caters to seniors. The station area itself usually has some tokers and loiterers. It’s not as safe as Hyde Park, but Cottage Grove is beginning to look less and less like West Woodlawn. Again, YMMV.
When travelling around campus/Hyde Park at night, the University’s shuttles are great as well. Your D will get a longer briefing on this during O-Week, and they’ll tell her to download the app linked below, which provides real-time locations and schedules for the shuttles and some CTA buses.
https://uchicago.transloc.com/info/mobile
Yes!
Campus is very busy during the day, and generally peaceful even at night. The quad is, of course, pedestrianized so getaway vehicles can’t access it. My summer routine has included regular walks through the quad and the surrounding area, and the UCPD is there, just as they are during the year. Even campus police, while I wouldn’t want them handling a sexual assault when real cops are an option, are enough to push most crime off campus.
I’ve observed a few times that the area between 53rd and 55th street is best avoided at night if possible. The number of students living off-campus in the area draws small-time thieves and robbers to these streets, particularly 54th and Ellis. If your D is headed to shops or restaurants on 53rd, a shuttle from the Reg will get her there quickly enough, as will a short detour along Lake Park Avenue.
I’d also steer clear of the medical campus late at night - it’s closer to Washington Park and less well-lit and well-patrolled than most of campus, so that area’s a little riskier.
Otherwise, few places come to mind. And I’d worry less still when travelling in a larger group - there’s safety in numbers.
@JBStillFlying : If one student beat another up without provocation, the fact that they knew one another wouldn’t mean that there wasn’t a danger he or she might do it again, to other students, known or unknown. The assailant may know lots of students already, and lots of students the assailant doesn’t know may meet the assailant tomorrow. There’s an obvious public safety issue there . . . and also an obvious privacy issue, too, especially when all there is is a bare, uninvestigated allegation. It’s silly to say that such an incident in Cobb Hall is less of a public safety issue than a street mugging on 53rd Street, but also silly to ignore that the consequences to the community of making an alert – which would have to name the accused in order to be meaningful – are problematic.
Now, if you change the beating to “fondling,” I wonder what difference that makes.
@“Cariño” This thread has become super-esoteric. From my standpoint the answer is really simple. Thousands of UChicago students, undergraduate and graduate, as well as faculty and other staff (including my child), cross and re-cross the Midway daily, at all times of the day. Nothing bad happens to them, except sometimes in the winter they get cold, and when it rains they may get wet. There is a lot of traffic, too, so that even if one is walking alone one is not really alone unless it’s very late at night or early in the morning. And that applies throughout the campus area, certainly during the day. There are 15-20,000 people associated with the university on the University of Chicago campus daily, plus another 20,000 or so Hyde Park residents. It’s safe.
(How many people are in your suburban community, by the way? The more people there are, the more the absolute number of crimes there will be. Twenty crimes per year in a community of 2,000 is the same crime rate as 400 in a community of 40,000, but reading about one or two crimes a month, vs. one or two crimes a day, feels like something entirely different. I am not saying that Hyde Park’s crime rate is a low as your suburb’s, but rather that this kind of discussion gives a distorted sense of how much higher it is, and what that means.)
Your daughter will decide what time of day she feels more comfortable taking the shuttle.
In terms of getting to Michigan Avenue and the Art Institute, the most pleasant ways have already been discussed in this thread: The 6 express bus is really nice, and it’s perfect for going to the Art Institute. The Metra train is pricey, especially since the marginal cost of a CTA trip in $0, but it’s super-fast and gets you a little closer to the Magnificent Mile than the 6 bus will.
If she’s feeling up for more of a challenge, the Green Line El is actually very convenient to South Campus, but requires walking a few blocks through an area in which University of Chicago people do not predominate, and sharing your el car with more non-U people. Eventually she’ll try it, probably as part of a group (maybe even during O-week, with her house), and she’ll decide if she feels comfortable with it or not.
She will get familiar with Hyde Park. There isn’t any obvious place to avoid. 53rd Street is sort of the trashy business street, which makes it both the place you would most avoid if you were avoiding someplace and a place you are likely to want to go to from time to time if you are a college student.
Everything is about comfort, not objective risk. @Zinhead is right: you can reduce your risk of CTA-related crime by picking your stops, but that means reducing it from practically nothing to something less than practically nothing. And you are less likely to be mugged on a busy corner than in the middle of a less-travelled street, but you are not objectively likely to be mugged either place. So you do what makes you feel comfortable, not fearful.
Depending on the part of the body forcibly “fondled”, the Illinois classification of the crime may have been criminal sexual abuse, which is a misdemeanor (and maybe not reported in public crime reports). http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=072000050K11-1.50 Nowadays, many would call this kind of crime “sexual assault” (which seems pretty logical, since it’s unquestionably a battery and it’s sexual). E.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_and_Billy_Bush_recording. Illinois draws a distinction in label and severity of crime between criminal sexual abuse and criminal sexual assault. Some other states label is a lower degree of “sexual assault”, but they seem also to classify it as a misdemeanor.
@Carino don’t let us neurotics scare you and your daughter away from UChicago and Hyde Park! Hopefully you are getting used to the data-obsessed, debate-enthralled and occasionally whimsical (Marlowe1 par excellence!) UChicago CC poster!
My D will be in BJ and I’m far more concerned about her getting hit by a CTA bus or car crossing the midway than I am her being the victim of a violent attack. There will be kids coming to/from pretty much between 8 am to 9 pm from what I’ve seen of the schedule. If staying late at the Reg she’s best off taking the shuttle back unless she’s with a group - just to be on the super safe side. In my experience, the farther in you were from the boundaries (HP Blvd on the north, 61st on the south, Cottage Grove on the West, and LSD on the East) - particularly at night - generally the safer since that’s where most of the students will be. However, during the day walking to the Museum of Science and Industry should be fine (can’t speak for Cottage Grove but others can). HP is a college neighborhood so it doens’t clear out at the end of the day like parts of the downtown do. Crimes tend to be opportunistic so the thugs want you alone and surprised. If you are neither - ie not by your lonesome in a quiet section of HP near a dark alley and not oblivious to what’s going on around you - then you are providing very little incentive to be mugged or attacked.
Getting to the Art Institute or Mich. Ave. by CTA or Metra will be fine most times of day. At night there is a UChicago shuttle (Friday and Sat. nights? Can’t remember) but you can also take CTA if with a group. Our friends’ daughter who is a rising 2nd year has used the L w/o incident (both green and red) and has taken the bus that stops at South to Midway no problem. There are also Zip Cars to rent, apparently (just learned that). One of the UChicago shuttles does stop at the Cottage Grove L station though not sure of the schedule. At any rate with a little planning - as is appropriate for any city living - one can pretty much go anywhere w/o worrying about becoming a victim of crime.